


in dreams, it seems i can be anyone you want me to

by WattStalf



Series: Poll Fics [103]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Loss of Virginity, Love Confessions, Not Actually Unrequited Love, OR IS IT, One Night Stands, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:00:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26358364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WattStalf/pseuds/WattStalf
Summary: Piers and Zapp have been friends, just friends, for about a decade now, and that's all they're ever going to be. He's accepted that.
Relationships: Dande | Leon/Original Female Character(s), Nezu | Piers/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Poll Fics [103]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1459168
Kudos: 16





	in dreams, it seems i can be anyone you want me to

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, check out this super self-indulgent thing that won a poll for celebrating my anniversary of a certain fic providing service. It has been a month, so I can finally post it here. Tomorrow, there'll be a way more PWP oneshot with these two and several of my kinks.  
> Don't ask me about Zapp's status as a gym leader, you can either pretend that she replaced somebody from canon or that she's in the minor league we hear little about or do what I do and pretend that an AU where there are nine gym leaders wouldn't be the dumbest thing ever I don't care

Piers is an idiot, seriously.

He knows that he is, because it’s been how many years? And here he is, still in the same hopeless situation that he was in when he was twelve years old, pining for a girl who shouldn’t even be his type, and who barely notices that he’s alive. Well, the last part might be a bit of an exaggeration, considering she is one of his best friends, but it isn’t an exaggeration to say that she is completely incapable of seeing him as anything more than her friend, that she probably barely spares him a thought whenever they aren’t side by side.

Zapp was his rival back during his gym challenge. The two of them met then, at the age of twelve, and would battle from time to time. It was a friendly rivalry, and the two of them hit it off pretty well outside of battle, becoming friends. At the time, he knew he had a crush on her, and still tried to deny it, but even losing to her in the semi-finals was not enough to get him to shake those persistent feelings. She lost to another of her rivals, Raihan, right after that, he went on to the finals where the then reigning champion of two years soundly defeated him, thus starting  _ their _ rivalry.

Piers went back home and took over the Spikemuth gym, with plans to prepare it for Marnie, whenever she was old enough and ready for it, and Raihan worked his way up as the leader of Hammerlocke, his rivalry with Leon becoming famous. Zapp became an Electric type gym leader at some point after that, and the rest was history, the three quickly losing themselves to their work, but remaining friends throughout all of that. Beyond leading gyms, Piers has spent as much time on music as he can, Zapp has gotten into design, and Raihan has his whole social media influencing thing. And throughout all of that, Piers has still not managed to shake his crush on the sometimes flashy and obnoxious, sometimes mellow and mopey girl that caught his eye way too long ago.

Zapp is annoying, and he will be the first to tell anyone that. She is just as annoying as Raihan can be, if she puts her mind to it, and the two of them are absolutely unbearable together, but when she mellows out, she can be alright, he supposes, and at least then, she is more his speed. Yet he finds himself infatuated with both sides of her, regardless of how frustrating he claims to find her, and she tells him time and again that he is the best friend she has ever had, because he is the only person that gets her, and would spend time with her regardless of her mood.

He’s such a good friend, it turns out, that he is the only person she trusts to tell about her hopeless crush on the champion, which is still Leon, because he seems to be entirely undefeatable. Zapp trusts him with this secret, she says, because she knows that he isn’t going to go around telling anyone or laughing behind her back, and because he is just so easy to talk to, that she feels as though she can tell him anything. Lucky, lucky Piers.

He isn’t sure where this all came from. When they were still traveling as rivals, she was not impressed by the young champion, certain that any of her friends could put him in his place, certain that he just go lucky the past few years. Even after seeing Raihan lose, she had not been blown away by it, and even as she admitted that Leon was in a league all his own, she did not show any of the signs of infatuation that Piers came to see in her later.

It happened some time after they were all gym leaders, maybe that one year where, through the luck of the draw, and the way the matches were set up, Raihan did not end up the last gym leader to face the lucky trainer in the finals for once. Zapp managed to defeat that trainer, and had a very brief battle with Leon, who managed to shut her down at every turn. He shook her hand and smiled at her as he told her she gave him a good battle, and ever since then, she has been completely smitten, though Piers has no idea what she saw in Leon in that moment, to completely change her feelings towards him.

But maybe he’s just bitter and jealous, because he’s liked her since they were kids, and never managed to get up the courage to tell her, and now he’s glad that he never told her, because if guys like Leon are her type, then what chance does someone like him have? It’s better that things stay as they are, and that the two of them stay friends just like they have always been, with Piers pretending not to care one way or another about Zapp’s impossible crush on Leon.

“If you’d just talk to him,” he tries to suggest sometimes, “you might actually get somewhere.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” she always whines, even though he is pretty sure that’s exactly how getting to know someone works. But what does he know? He certainly doesn’t have the sort of social life that she does, so maybe she knows more about it than he does.

She claims that she can’t talk to Leon easily, that she can’t simply approach him and try to get to know him better. Even when ignoring the busy schedules that they both have, even if she were to plan to talk to him at a time that she could be sure he would have time for her, she seems certain that that would never work, and that things would be much better if she just admired him from afar, hoping that something might change, but doing absolutely nothing to change it herself.

Piers wants to say that he doesn’t get it, and that she’s an idiot, but that’s exactly how he has handled his feelings for her, so it’s pretty obvious that he’s the biggest idiot there is.

~X~

Getting Piers to come out to anything is like pulling teeth, and that is why Zapp doesn’t see nearly as much of him as she would like to. Even outside of work related things, most of the gym leaders spend their time hanging out, and she goes along, because they’re her friends, because it’s a chance to hang out with her longtime friend Raihan, and Nessa, whom she has gotten closer to since the Water type leader made her debut, the two of them mostly bonding over the whole designer-model connection.

She definitely doesn’t just go because it is sometimes an excuse to be in the same room as Leon, even though she still has no intention of approaching him. That is definitely only slightly, mildly related to her reasons, though she has to admit that it is both nice and incredibly stressful, and that it would be a lot better for her if her best friend was there. If she can even call him her best friend, when they spend such little time together lately.

But if she isn’t able to convince him to come with her, then she goes out to see him instead, finding any excuse that she can, until finally, he tells her about a show he’s going to have. She feels bad for how little she is actually involved with his music career. When they were kids, she promised that she would be his number one fan one day. Of course, when they were kids, she thought he was the absolute coolest person in the world, his fuck-everything attitude charming her right into her very crush.

But that’s in the past, and things are different now. Even so, she does still feel bad about not coming out to see him perform, even if that is mostly due to scheduling conflicts that she has little to do with and no way out of. When she does finally have the chance, she is glad, eager to see him in his element. She knows that he’s damn good at what he does, even if it has been years since the last time that she got to see him live.

Though she feels like a total outsider at a concert like this, she can’t deny that it’s cool as hell, and that she wishes she  _ weren’t _ such an outsider. She has never been like him, and she doubts that she could just magically transform into someone as cool as Piers and his friends are, but at the very least, she can admire him from a distance. That’s what she did when she was twelve, when she was silly enough to have a crush on him, and, boy, is she glad that she managed to get over that one, because that could have been awkward, otherwise.

Piers and Leon are like night and day, in more ways than one. It seems ridiculous to her that she ever could have thought she was in love with someone like  _ Piers _ , when she knows now that Leon is her type. It must have just been how cool he seemed back then, tricking her into thinking that she wanted to be with him. She was just a kid, so she can’t be blamed for being that stupid. Tonight, she is just here to support a good friend, and hopefully have a chance to talk to him afterward, so that she can rope him into going drinking with her and the others in a couple weeks.

Things are getting kind of hectic right now, while preparing for the next gym challenge, so that is the soonest that the group can get together. She wants Piers to at least make an appearance, because otherwise, it will be a while before they can just hang out like that. That is part of why she fixed her schedule so that she would be able to come tonight, because it’s been too long, and she doesn’t want to miss out on another concert when she won’t have a chance for a while.

She hopes that she will be able to convince him to go, but she is prepared to resort to drastic measures, if she really has to. If she has to drag him there by force, she’s pretty sure she can manage, what with how skinny she is, and if she ropes Raihan into helping her, then it will be easy. That being said, she really hopes that it doesn’t come to that.

Zapp is snapped out of her thoughts by the cheer going through the crowd, and she realizes that Piers has already come out.

~X~

Okay, this was a mistake. This was a really,  _ really _ big mistake on her part, and she knows that she had no way of knowing beforehand that it would be this big of a mistake, and that she really can’t blame herself for it, but she still wishes that she had not worked so hard to move things along to come tonight, that she had made the same excuses as always, because she knows that Piers would have understood, and that would have been so much better for her than what has happened tonight.

And she tries to tell herself that it’s just the glamor making her feel this way. Maybe the setting itself isn’t that glamorous, and maybe Piers is more  _ badass _ than glamorous, but she knows that being up onstage in front of everyone counts as glamorous, and that, even if she has known him since they were kids, he still had an air of celebrity as he sang. That is as good an excuse as any for why she was so swept up in it, why she could not take her eyes off of him, and why she could not stop her heart from aching as she listened to his voice, bringing back memories of a night when they were twelve, camping with their tents pitched side by side, and Piers singing into the night after they finished dinner, as he showed her just what he really wanted to do with his life.

It’s the glamor, or it’s the nostalgia, or it is some combination of the two, tricking her into thinking that she has a crush on him, that she  _ still _ has a crush on him, even after all these years, even after convincing herself otherwise and managing to put that phase completely behind her. It is nothing more and nothing less, because there is no way that she has fallen for Piers all over again or, worse- never actually got over him to begin with.

In the end, she leaves without talking to him at all, because she is in such a panic, which makes her feel bad, but she just can’t face him right now, not until she has managed to sort her thoughts out and remind herself that he is just her friend, that she only sees him as a friend. But she had meant to try and convince him to hang out in a few weeks, and even if she does not want to see him right this second, that does not change the fact that she wanted him to be there.

When he texts her, asking where she got off to before he could say hi, she replies that she was really tired and needed to get going, because she had to be up early in the morning. A complete lie, but it is a lot easier than telling him the truth behind why she rushed out of there. And it gives her an opening to tell him that if he really wants to hang out with her, he should join her in a couple weeks. She expects him to put up more of a fight, but her disappearance at the concert must have worked wonders, because he agrees without any fuss.

Now all she has to do is get over whatever weird feelings she may have right now, before then. The best solution to that is to remind herself that it is not Piers that she is infatuated with, but rather, Leon. She is excited for that outing, not because she convinced Piers to come with them, but because she will get to see Leon, and maybe, if she is really lucky, then she might have a chance to talk to him for a little while. Piers is not worth getting excited about, because she gets to talk to him all the time, and she doesn’t like him like that, anyway.

It should be easy to put all of this behind her, and then she will have a great night with her best friend at her side, watching her moon over the guy that she is too much of a coward to actually approach on her own. It will be great, with everything feeling just like it always does, complete and utter normalcy. She likes Leon, and Piers is her best friend. If she just keeps repeating that to herself, then it doesn’t matter that she isn’t able to stop thinking about Piers; she knows what her feelings  _ really _ are.

~X~

He knows that he’s being stupid about Zapp again, and he really wishes that he could figure out some way to turn that off. Sometimes, he will go a while without being stupid about her, so that makes it especially frustrating when the stupidity kicks back in, because it reminds him that he is no closer to getting over her than he ever was, and he still just as big of a slave to his feelings as he was when he was twelve.

This time, he’s being stupid because she left before he could talk to her, because he was looking forward to talking to her, and seeing what she thought of the concert. Maybe he was a little bit nervous, and maybe his first thought when he saw that she had already left was that she couldn’t bear to face him after such an embarrassing show. Maybe he’s still feeling mopey about all of that when she texts him and asks him to come drinking with her and some of the other gym leaders- and Leon- and maybe that’s why he agrees without really thinking about it, because he just wants to see her, and have a chance to feel better about the whole ordeal.

But then he realizes that he just signed himself up for a night of watching her moon over Leon while being too afraid to talk to him, and he remembers just how stupid he always is, specifically whenever Zapp is involved. He will end up trying to encourage her to talk to him, while she insists, once again, that she can’t, and it will be just like it always is. At least if she had talked to him at the concert, there would have been little chance of Leon coming up in conversation.

This is his own fault, for not being able to get over her, though. It’s not like she knows how he feels, and it’s not like she’s intentionally torturing him by talking about her crush. She’s just acting like friends do, and he is the one that had to go and make it weird. It also isn’t her fault that he is just as big of a coward as she is, and while she worries about talking to Leon, he has spent years refusing to just tell her how he feels, because he isn’t sure how it might change their friendship.

He thinks about backing out and making excuses, but Zapp would probably be pissed off at him for that, especially after he said that he would really go this time. She is harder to get a hold of these days too, and they don’t text nearly as often, but he tries to tell himself that it is just a coincidence that it has been worse since the concert. She’s probably just busy, and not avoiding him because she thinks that he sucks. After all, she didn’t think that he sucked when they were kids, and even told him she was going to be his biggest fan.

Maybe that didn’t actually mean anything, though. It wouldn’t be the first time he held onto an otherwise insignificant memory, just because it meant so much to him in the moment. What is his relationship with Zapp, if not him clinging to insignificant things that they have shared, assuming that it means more than it does, just because she’s his best friend?  _ Fuck _ , he is so unbelievably mopey about everything.

He spends way too much time in his head as he waits until their plans finally come up, and he considers backing out at the last minute, as he always does when he makes plans. Often, he is tricked into making plans when he is feeling a lot more into the whole idea, and when the day rolls around, he is in an entirely different mood, and doesn’t feel like doing what he used to be excited about. Zapp gets like that sometimes too, something that he always liked about her, if only because she was able to understand him. Sometimes, the two of them would spend nights in together, because one of them felt like they needed to cancel plans, and somehow, it felt a lot more relaxed to have the other there with them, as if it didn’t even count as social interaction.

He isn’t going to back out, because he wants to see Zapp, and if he’s hanging out with her, it can’t be that bad, and he doubts very seriously that she is going to say anything about the concert this late in, negative or otherwise. Sure, she might be staring at Leon for most of the night, not listening to his advice, but he will still have fun if he’s hanging out with her.

As soon as he arrives, she waves him over, and he feels his heart in his throat, and remembers just how much of an idiot he is. A really recurring theme where Zapp is concerned.

“Been a while,” he says, as he sits down next to her. She is by herself right now; he can see that Raihan has already ditched her in favor of trying to drink Leon under the table, which only makes him question her reasons for avoiding Leon further. She has an excuse to go talk to him if she’s following along with Raihan, and instead, she keeps to herself, watching the two of them and pretending like she isn’t.

“Sorry, I’ve just been busy, you know how it is,” she says.  _ You know how it is _ seems to be the best way for one gym leader to explain things to another.

“Glad we could catch up now, at least,” he says, and she nods. Things go quiet then, and he orders a drink, seeing that she has already started on one. For a while, neither of them say much, probably because she is too distracted by Leon to make conversation, and Piers does not really know where to start any other sort of conversation with her.

Maybe it’s just his own paranoia talking, or maybe it’s even the alcohol, but lately, he has felt as though things are different with Zapp. Though it’s true that he hasn’t actually seen her since the concert, it still seems as though that’s where the change started, and he doesn’t know what has changed, but he just thinks that  _ something _ has changed. Maybe it’s him, maybe he’s the one that caused the change, even if he can’t remember doing anything differently, so maybe he should try and act a little more like he always does.

“You should just go talk to him,” he tries, starting with a familiar and tired line, earning him a sigh from Zapp, who was definitely looking at Leon, and trying to keep him from noticing that she was.

“I’m not gonna do that, we’ve been over this,” she replies, a familiar and tired response.

“Not gonna get anywhere just mopin’ over here.”

“Says the king of moping.”

“At least I’m not mopin’ like you are,” he shoots back, even though he definitely is, he just can’t tell her that he is, because then she might find out that she’s the one he’s moping over.

“It’s really not that big of a deal. I wouldn’t know where to start with him, so it’s fine,” she says.

“Start with hi, maybe?” he suggests, resisting the urge to roll his eyes before taking another drink. Zapp brushes him off completely, and the two continue drinking in silence, until he  _ knows _ that it’s the alcohol making him think all of the stupid thoughts on his mind right now.

“The thing about Leon is,” Zapp starts up without prompting, her voice giving away just how much she has had to drink, “I really wouldn’t know where to start with him. Like, even if I could say hi, and even if that worked and we talked and hit it off and he liked me, I wouldn’t know what to do after that.”

“Whaddaya mean by that?”

“Like, he’s definitely got… _ you know _ , experience, and I don’t. I couldn’t just…go out with a guy like that, not without making a complete fool of myself. I’m just not ready for that, is what I’m saying.”

“But if you’re not ready now, then you never will be,” he protests. “Nothin’s gonna change if you don’t make it change, huh?”

“Yeah, but…I mean…I’ve never gone out with anyone! Ever!” He shouldn’t feel so relieved to hear her admit that she’s stayed completely single and inexperienced all these years, and yet, here he is. “I just think I’m not ready for him yet, it would be too much to start with.”

“So, what? You’d try to go out with him if you could sleep with someone else first?” he asks, and she makes a face.

“You don’t have to see it like that,” she says, but she does not argue the point. “It’s not like I was trying to avoid anything casual, you know…along the way. I just haven’t really met anyone that’s gone for something like that with me, and I would never know where to start, because-”

“Because you only have eyes for Leon, so you don’t think of other guys like that without them putting the idea in your head first,” he finishes for her, and she lays her hand against her arms, groaning.

“You really don’t have to say all of this like this.”

“I’m just bein’ honest with you. You wouldn’t talk to me if you didn’t want an honest opinion, right?” he asks, and she groans, which he takes as an agreement. The alcohol must be putting all of these stupid ideas into his head, because he has never considered trying anything with her while sober, and maybe it would have been better if he had canceled these plans after all. “If someone was after somethin’ like that, would you go through with it? Just to get your experience, I mean.”

“I don’t know, I mean…I guess so, but I…that makes me sound terrible. I’d hurt someone’s feelings if I wasn’t careful, or they might expect more out of me, so unless it was pretty clear that it wouldn’t be more, I mean…” Her voice is muffled as she still refuses to look up at him, but as she explains herself, he continues to get worse and worse ideas.

Sure, his feelings would be hurt, but she has hurt his feelings a lot over the years without ever realizing it, so it would probably be fine, just as long as he never let her know that he was hurting. And he knows better than to expect more from her, because he has never expected anything from her, not even once over all of the years that he has spent madly in love with her. It’s a terrible idea, and yet, it seems like a great idea right now, like the best idea that he has ever had. His one chance to be this close to Zapp, and then they can write it off as something completely casual and she can get the courage she needs to talk to Leon, and he will probably think she’s great, because of course she is, and Piers will not have to worry about it ever again.

And even though it will hurt, again, he is already used to hurting for her. At least this time, he will get some enjoyment out of the situation first.

“Look up ‘ere,” he says, tapping her head. She looks up a little bit, scowling, and he says, “Not like that. Come on, all the way up. No one wants to watch you mope.”

“You don’t have to tease me,” she sighs. “You just don’t get what it’s like.”

Yeah, that does it. Like hell he doesn’t know what it’s like. And though he has never allowed himself this line of thinking before, he allows himself to get a little bit frustrated with her, thinking about how much she has unknowingly put him through over the years. Maybe she does not owe him anything, but he feels like he owes this to himself, and if she is in need of experience, then this will benefit both of them, in different ways. It will also inevitably harm him more than help, but he treats that like he treats the hangover he’s going to have to deal with tomorrow- something that he can worry about when it hits, rather than while he is trying to enjoy himself.

“So you want experience?”

“Yes!” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’ve said it like a hundred times tonight. What? Do you have someone in mind or something? Why do you keep bringing it u-”

He kisses her.

After years of fantasizing about it, and wishing that he could actually do it, Piers kisses her, putting a hand on the back of her head as he does, holding her in place as she stiffens at first, surprised, as he expected her to be. He’s a little surprised himself, even though he spent the last several minutes thinking about how much he wanted to this to her, as if he had not actually expected himself to go through with it. Plenty of times over the years, he told himself that he would be blunt and tell her his feelings, that he would kiss her and then let her know that he was in love with her, only to back out before he ever even got close.

Perhaps he thought that was what would happen tonight, that he would back out of it this time too, but he is drunk and he is bold, and Zapp begins to relax into it, before, finally, she starts to return the kiss. Piers can’t help but moan into her mouth then, and Zapp moans as well, leaning in closer and closer. She must not hate it too much if she is allowing herself to get this into it and, before he knows it, she must have grown frustrated with the distance between them, because she pushes herself forward, throwing her arms around his neck as she moves into his seat, where she straddles his lap.

Drunk and touch-starved, the two of them are able to forget where they are for a little bit, his hands tangling in her hair as he kisses her like he has dreamed of kissing her for years. Tonight is going to go exactly how he has always dreamed a night with her would go, except for the part where she is still pining for Leon, and then tomorrow, everything can go back to normal, like nothing happened. Piers can accept that, just as long as he can have this one night with her.

Zapp pulls out of the kiss then, stiffening, and for a moment, he is afraid that it is all already over, that he pushed her too far and fucked it up, but then he notices that she is not nearly as concerned about what he has done to her, but about the eyes on them. Which is to say, about everyone that they know here, and some people who just recognize them for who they are. Right, they were in public before they forgot all about that and got lost in…all of this.

“Everyone’s staring at us, right?” she asks, in a small voice.

“Probably,” he replies.

“We should go somewhere else,” she says.

“Probably,” he repeats. “But you don’t live far from here, so that’s no problem with me.”

With that, the two of them leave as quickly as they are able to. Piers really isn’t thinking clearly, if he thought he could kiss her in public, in front of  _ Raihan _ , for fuck’s sake, and expect them to be able to pretend it never happened. One night stand or not, it will be a while before they hear the end of this. On the bright side, he supposes that, if she had a chance with Leon that she never noticed before, this might light a fire under his ass, once he finds out that they are not entirely committed yet, and that she is still technically free for the taking.

But that is the kind of wishful thinking that Zapp has already given up on, and he’s just about as certain as she is that Leon barely remembers she exists when he isn’t talking directly to her. More likely, that might have put her on his radar for the moment, but did nothing to shift his interest one way or the other. Piers probably shouldn’t hope for things like that, when he is supposed to be her best friend.

Fortunately for him, Zapp does not seem too concerned once she is outside again, away from everyone else. She is still just as excited about getting away, and the two are able to get a taxi pretty quickly, spending the short trip to her home with her on his lap again. He’s starting to feel guilty about just how easy this is, but he knows he will get his payback when she wakes up in the morning and begs him to never speak of this night again.

She lets him in, the two of them stumbling inside the apartment that he has been in less and less recently. They don’t spend nearly enough time together, and though part of it is due to their busy schedules, and his general aversion to going out more than necessary, he knows that a part of it is because he sometimes finds it easier to be away from her than with her, but that’s his own problem, not something that he needs to let get in the way of his friendship. It’s only going to be harder to be with her once she does get a boyfriend, no matter who that boyfriend may be.

He promises himself that he will overlook his own feelings to spend more time with her from here on out, if she ever wants to see him again after what the two of them are about to do.

Right now, at least, she is still completely on board, and he follows after her, jaw nearly hitting the floor as she starts peeling off her shirt while stumbling to her bedroom. For a woman with no experience, Zapp sure as shit is not wasting any time with this. If not for her impulsiveness tonight, Piers does not know if he would have been able to make it this far on his own, but because of her, he has not had a chance to even think about chickening out of this.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” she reminds him, as if they did not just have this conversation while they were out, as if that is not exactly what lead them to this situation. “So, you know, be gentle with me and stuff.”

“’Course I’ll be gentle,” he mutters, moving to take his own clothes off, since she seems intent on undressing herself. This part would probably be a lot more awkward if his sharper senses weren’t dulled right now, but as things are, he only vaguely remembers to be a little bit self-conscious about his body, but he can’t even think about that for long, before he is caught up gawking at Zapp’s ass as she finishes taking off her panties.

She got undressed pretty damn fast, and when she turns around, he clears his throat, trying to make it seem like he wasn’t staring, and she scoffs, coming over to him. “You’re taking your sweet time like always,” she mutters, reaching down to unzip her pants as she does.

Zapp is not a big help in undressing him, and more often than not, he just has to push her hands away to be able to make any progress, but then, once he is undressed, they are close enough that he can pull her into another kiss, enough to once again distract himself from the fact that his best friend is looking at him naked. Hey, at least he gets to look at her naked while he’s at it, which is definitely a fair enough trade for him.

As for what comes next, he is mostly making this up as he goes along. It’s not that he hasn’t spent a lot of time thinking about how this would go if it happened, and it’s not like he hasn’t watched his fair share of porn, imagining Zapp in the model’s place, even if he knows that all that is not the best frame of reference. Hell, he’s done research into more realistic matters when he was feeling particularly pathetic, daydreaming about something he never thought would happen, but because he never thought it would happen, he still isn’t entirely certain about all of this.

But if he just keeps kissing her while he touches her, he can keep up the same energy, and keep himself distracted from how little he knows. He feels as though everything he does is clumsy, like every movement is off somehow, but Zapp moans into his mouth at times, making him think that he might at least have something figured out, that he might be doing something right. Even so, he has no idea what that is, and just takes his cues from how she moans, to figure out what she likes about it, and what he should keep doing, until she is pulling out of the kiss to gasp, “Please…please can we do more?”

He’s been waiting to hear that from her for a very long time, and that is enough to make him forget his nerves entirely. Of course he wants to do more, and if that’s what she wants, then that is exactly what he’s going to give her. With Zapp laying beneath him on her bed, staring up at him with something like desire in her eyes, how the hell can he hope to stop herself?

He kisses her as he presses into her, muffling his own pathetic moan by doing so, just barely able to remind himself to take this part slow, not wanting to push her too far. The last thing he wants is for their one night together to be so unpleasant that she would want to forget it entirely. Perhaps she will still want to forget it because of how awkward it will be to face him afterward, but if she enjoys it, she probably won’t be able to help herself, letting it slip into her fantasies from time to time.

But maybe it’s fucked up of him to want this to stick with her for that long, when he has already convinced himself that he is content with just one night together.

It is all so dizzying and overwhelming that it is hard to take things as slow as is necessary, and harder still not to become so overcome with sensation that he loses focus entirely. In fact, he is not sure just how well  _ he _ will be able to remember this, with everything blurring more and more, and he knows that that has nothing to do with the alcohol. He can’t speak for Zapp, but he is not nearly as drunk as he is pretending to be; it just serves as an excuse for doing something this stupid.

Piers barely knows how he gets from one point to the next, until he realizes that Zapp’s arms are wrapped around his neck, that he is jerking his hips in an erratic rhythm, completely lost in the moment as he gives into the passion that results from years of pent up feelings that he has already accepted he will never be able to put into words, at least not in anything that he actually says to her. This is the closest that he is ever going to get to telling her how she feels, and yet, it can also simply be reduced to working out a lot of sexual frustration, because even beyond his hopeless crush,  _ goddamn _ , has he wanted to fuck her for a long time, nothing artsy to be said about that.

He is just barely in control himself, and only enough to make sure that he does not say anything stupid, anything that he will regret once this is over. Nothing is said that could make this seem like more than just a simple, drunken hookup- even if he is not that drunk, and even if he does not think she is either, not at this point. He makes sure that nothing he says could give him away, reduced to simple moans, sometimes saying her name, but not even daring to tell her how beautiful she is, for fear that that might not sound too platonic.

That is why it catches him by surprise, when she comes so suddenly, and as she cries out, she whines, “Ah, fuck, I love you!”

At least, that is what he thinks she says, especially judging by how stiff she becomes, once she realizes that she has said it, but by then, he is more worried about pulling out before he comes as well, because they’re two idiot virgins who were not planning on doing this tonight, so of course he didn’t actually think anything like that through. And then he is trying to catch his breath, too dazed to think anything through right then, and by the time he is back in his right mind, he has already convinced himself that he must have been hearing things, that there is no way she would have said something like that. If she had, she would have repeated herself by now, or asked him if he heard her, so he must have just imagined it, because that’s what he wanted her to say.

So he just lays down besides her, the two of them side by side on her bed, both of them staring at the ceiling. After a long and awkward moment- he hopes that all of their interactions do not become this awkward now- she says, “Thanks…for that. That was really…that was great, so thanks for…you know.”

“What do you even like about Leon?” he asks her, before he can stop himself. He knows that she did not actually profess her love for him, and he knows that he has heard it all from her a thousand times, so he has no reason to doubt her crush on the champion. It’s just that he can’t actually remember her ever giving him a reason, and some part of him really wants to push it, even though he knows he shouldn’t. “I mean, like…what is it about him that makes you so hung up on him?”

“I’m not even,” she says quickly, then groans. “I mean, I am, I mean…I like that he…I like…fuck! Why are you even asking that right now?”

“Isn’t that what this was about? All of this?” He hates himself for pushing this so much, but still, he can’t stop.

“No, I mean…I guess it was, but I don’t…I don’t actually know,” she says. “About him, I mean, I just…I…” She covers her face and she groans, sounding as if she is genuinely pained by whatever her train of thought is. “I’m just so stupid!”

“Huh?” Piers is taken aback. He had more expected her to get mad at him, rather than insult herself. “What for? For likin’ Leon? Or…for sleepin’ with me?” Please don’t let it be the last one.

“No, not either of those! Or maybe both of them, I don’t know! You’re just gonna think I’m stupid!”

“I’m not gonna think you’re stupid, Zapp, what the hell? Just tell me what’s goin’ on,” he says, even more confused now.

“I know you heard what I said earlier, you’re just not saying anything about it right now cos you don’t wanna hurt my feelings, so we’re just pretending it didn’t happen, and I’m ruining that by bringing it up now,” she says, and his heart feels like it stops for a moment. Her face is still covered by her hands, so he can’t see her expression and try and guess at her feelings. “I’m just so stupid, because I love you so much and I just figured it out a couple weeks ago!”

“Zapp?!” A couple weeks ago? A couple weeks ago was when she left his concert without saying anything, and then got weirdly distant. Was that because she…?

“I thought if I just…put all my focus on Leon I could forget about it, but instead, I just keep figuring out that I don’t really like him, not like I like you! I mean, sure, he’s good looking and he was nice to me that one time, but when we were kids…fuck, it’s so dumb, but you were my first crush,” she says, and Piers really, really hopes that this is all real, and that he didn’t black out hours ago and dream everything since they left.

“Zapp, can you just look at me for a second?” he asks, but she just groans louder, and does not move her hands.

“I thought I was over it, but I’m not, and I don’t know if I’m ever gonna be over it, and then we just did all  _ that _ , but just as…as friends, and I wasn’t gonna make it weird, but now I’m making it weird!”

“For fuck’s sake, Zapp, you’re not makin’ it weird!” he snaps, finally grabbing her by the wrists so that he can pull them away. “I’m the one who kissed you, remember? And don’t even start with that ‘as friends’ bullshit, cos you know I didn’t kiss you like a friend!”

Her eyes widen, and he realizes just how much his voice has risen. He did not mean to get that…rowdy about this, but he feels frustrated, like he has to shout to get through to her, and now, he hopes that he has. It is hard to process everything that is happening, but at the very least, he knows that Zapp has just confessed to him, that she says she loves him and that she has had feelings for them since they were kids, and like hell he is going to let her keep wallowing in what she assumes is unrequited love, when he has spent years doing the same thing.

Piers really is an idiot, because if he had made a move way back then, they never would have had to go through all of this.

“I love you, Zapp,” he says, once he knows that he has her undivided attention. “Ever since we were kids. I was ready to just let this be a one time thing to boost your confidence and keep as a nice memory, but, fuck it. Why don’t we just make this permanent?”

She blinks a few times, before throwing her arms around him, pulling him into a crushing hug as she essentially repeats what he just thought to himself. “You’re an idiot, you’re so stupid. If you loved me when we were kids, why didn’t you just say something? We could have been doing this all along?”

“You didn’t say anything either,” he reminds her. “And, besides, we can always make up for lost time?”

She clings tighter to him and says, “You’re still an idiot. So am I, but you really are. But, yeah, let’s make up for lost time. Preferably as quickly as possible.”

“Does that mean…?” He doesn’t want to assume that she’s referring to what he’s thinking about right now, but she is still hugging him while completely naked, and he is still a man. Fortunately, she kisses him then, and rolls on top of him, answering his question without having to say a word.

~X~

When Zapp wakes up in the morning with Piers still in her bed, she’s glad that it wasn’t just a dream, and glad that she let things go as far as they did the night before. She was so panicked when they got carried away kissing, thinking that he was just helping her with the experience she said she needed- just an excuse for why she could not commit to going out with anyone, to hide from the fact that she was still pining for him. It seemed like, at any moment, her true feelings might come spilling out, and then they did.

And just like that, she found out that she had nothing to worry about the whole time. She and Piers are just both stupid, and both could not figure out how to tell the other one how they felt, and now that that’s out of the way, she supposes that they are not just friends anymore. Which she also supposes that it’s a good thing that they have things figured out already, cos after their very public display of affection the night before, it would be difficult to convince certain people that there is not anything going on between them.

Once she notices that he is awake, she nudges him and says, “So, you had a crush on me?”

“No idea why,” he replies, not missing a beat. “Not nearly as embarrassing as you having a crush on me though.”

“Shut up, you were, like, the coolest person I’d ever met!”

“When I was twelve?”

“I was twelve too!”

It is, at the very least, a smooth transition into a relationship, with the two of them behaving the way they always have. Except this time, when one of them wants the other to shut up, it is perfectly acceptable to use their own mouth to make it happen.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're interested in my writing updates, please follow my fanfiction twitter @WattStalf  
> 


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